Science

Just a few years after scientists warned of impending ocean apocalypse, a handful of simple management tools have pulled some of Earth’s fisheries back from the edge of collapse, according to a review of global fish populations and catch data.

But though the big picture is brighter than before, many of the details remain dark. Some scientists say some populations may never be able to recover, no matter what’s done now.

“In most cases, when you reduce fishing pressure enough, the stock rebounds. But there’s a breaking point beyond which the system has changed so much that it may not recover,” said Boris Worm, a marine biologist at Canada’s Dalhousie University. “The longer you wait to fix a situation, the harder it becomes.”

Read the complete story at Wired Science.

Rebecca Goldburg, director of Marine Science at the Pew Environment Group, issued the following statement today in response to a paper published in the journal Science. The paper’s lead authors, Dr. Ray Hilborn and Dr. Boris Worm, who have held differing views about the status of global ocean fisheries in the past, collaborated on the research for this study. They were joined by 19 co-authors.

"A large and diverse group of leading fisheries scientists and ecologists have concluded that the common benchmark now used to determine the amount of ocean fish to catch is not a viable approach for managing our oceans. The study disproves the notion that we can push catch targets to their limits and still maintain healthy ocean ecosystems. Fishing targets must be more conservative than they have been in the past.

"Two scientists who once held opposing views about the state of ocean fisheries now agree about the significance of global fisheries declines and the solutions needed to reverse these trends. If fishery managers worldwide heed these important scientific findings, then we have an extraordinary opportunity to restore ocean fisheries."

Read the complete story at Science Blog.

63 percent of world fisheries need to be rebuilt.  Catch limits, other restrictions key to recovery.  Climate change, ocean acidification could have impact.

A fisheries expert who in 2006 predicted total global collapse of fish and seafood populations by 2048 is more optimistic of recovery, based on a wide-ranging two-year study by scientists in North and South America, Africa, Australia and New Zealand. "I am somewhat more hopeful that we will be in a better state … than what we originally predicted, simply because I see that we have the management tools that are proven to work," said Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He is a co-author of a paper in the journal Science and also an author of the pessimistic 2006 report.

Still, 63 percent of fish stocks worldwide need to be rebuilt, the researchers said.

Read the complete story from Reuters.

Three years after a controversial paper predicted the collapse of 90% of the world’s edible fish species by 2048, the original paper’s author and a main opponent have collaborated on a groundbreaking survey of the Earth’s oceans which finds hope for fish stocks and the millions who rely on them for protein — but only if overfishing is ended.

The paper, published today in the journal Science, comes after a 2006 Science paper by marine biologist Boris Worm of Dalhousie University in Canada and colleagues. Its prediction of the destruction of fish populations because of overfishing and ecosystem destruction caused enormous controversy among marine ecologists and fisheries biologists.

But a 2006 radio interview that brought Worm and fisheries biologist Ray Hilborn of the University of Washington in Seattle together to debate the paper led them to launch an international research effort over two years involving 21 scientists who surveyed 166 areas where specific fish species are caught — called a fishery worldwide and looked intensively at 10 marine ecosystems.

Read the complete story at USA Today.

Their conclusions are at once gloomy — overfishing continues to threaten many species — and upbeat: a combination of steps can turn things around. But because antagonism between ecologists and fisheries-management experts has been intense, many familiar with the study say the major important factor is that it was done at all.

They say they hope the study will inspire similar collaborations between scientists whose focus is safely exploiting specific natural resources and those interested mainly in conserving them.  “We need to merge those two communities,” said Steve Murawski, chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This paper starts to bridge that gap.”

Read the complete story at The New York Times.

An important new study of the world’s fisheries has found that management efforts especially in developmentally advanced nations — notably the U.S., New Zealand and Iceland — have been effective in reversing declines caused by chronic overfishing.  The headliners behind the new story are Boris Worm and his former nemesis, Ray Hilborn, who had sharply criticized Worm’s past work as being motivated by an anti-fishing agenda, not by true science.

A team of 21 scientists from academia and government, many with extensive ties to Pew, worked two years on the study, titled "Rebuilding Global Fisheries." And its findings contrast sharply with previous findings by Pew and other ENGO scientists, that suggested the oceans were so "overfished" that many stocks were on a path to extinction.

The report appears in the latest issue of Science magazine. It presents a more hopeful picture than previous alarmist predictions by the chief author, Boris Worm, and colleagues of his who have produced many academic studies funded by the Pew Environment Group and associated environmental non-government organizations.

Read the complete story at The Gloucester Daily Times.

The ocean floor is a riotous landscape of volcanoes, valleys and deep gashes spewing chemicals — but has been little explored. Until now.

A new exploratory crusade, using the world’s most advanced technological instruments, is about to bring this hidden landscape into view in unprecedented ways. At great depths, under crushing pressures, cameras and sonar aboard the Okeanos Explorer will map the ocean floor — and use broadband satellite transmission to instantly send its data and discoveries back to dry land.

Docked in San Francisco on Friday, National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration scientists aboard the giant vessel celebrated their new partnership with the science center Exploratorium, which will receive the images for real-time public viewing as they are being seen by scientists.

Read the complete story at Mercury News.

The fish population in coral reef areas is often assessed by snorkelers or SCUBA divers, but new research shows that these methods may misrepresent the number of fish.

Using snorkelers and SCUBA divers is not the best way to monitor fish populations, if we want to know the evolutionary effects of overfishing.

The fish population in coral reef areas is often assessed by snorkelers or SCUBA divers, but new research shows that these methods may misrepresent the number of fish.

Read the complete story at Science Daily.

The decline of commercially valuable ground fish stocks is symptomatic of the global, over-fishing crisis. Perhaps no other region on the globe is more illustrative of this crisis than New England (the region that extends from the states of Connecticut and Rhode Island in the south to the state of Maine in the north), whose large-scale, commercial fishing industry goes back 400 years. But from the 1930’s to the 1990’s, most of the commercial fish stocks had been depleted from over-fishing. Currently, bottom feeding lobsters comprise the vast majority of gulf of Maine fishermen “landings”.

A federal law governing the nation’s fisheries, reauthorized in 2007, mandates that a majority of fish stocks be “rebuilt” by 2014–no small challenge–especially given that the same law stipulates that each fishery maintain a “continuous optimum yield.”

According  to The New England Fisheries Management Council (which regulates fishing from Connecticut to Maine), 13 of the 19 ground fish stocks, which include halibut, hake, pollock, pout, yellowtail and winter flounders, are currently over-fished, and are still in a major state of decline. The lone exception is the haddock.  Further, the good news about haddock is not a small-scale or local phenomenon; of the two major, separate haddock stocks within U.S. waters (one on Georges Bank, one farther north, in the Gulf of Maine), both fisheries are considered “recovered”.

Read the complete story at Eco Worldly.

A filmy, pink dawn has just slipped above the horizon as the F/V Stormy Weather arrives at the fishing grounds. After a two-hour cruise from port in Hampton Beach, NH, the vessel has reached the southwest corner of Jeffrey’s Ledge, a winding offshore glacial deposit—and prime fish real estate—that stretches from Massachusetts to Maine. Captain Carl Bouchard and deckhand Paul Kuncho unfurl an intricate knitwork of colorful rope. The two men have performed this maneuver countless times, and they release the trawl net with a minimum of spoken words. Within 15 minutes the net has been deployed into the cold, dark water. The captain brings the Stormy Weather up to towing speed. Kuncho heads below deck to heat some sausage breakfast sandwiches in the microwave. Another day of fishing has begun.

Since the 17th century, fishing has been an integral part of New England’s economy and its culture. But 400 years of scooping fish from the sea have taken a toll, and the effects of the global overfishing crisis are as evident in New England as they are anywhere in the world. Stocks of Atlantic cod and other fabled New England groundfish species have plummeted. Spiny dogfish—voracious, 5-foot-long sharks detested by fishermen—have proliferated in the niche vacated by the predatory fish. But unlike predators such as cod, which feed on a smorgasbord of marine creatures, dogfish are primarily fish eaters. So as groundfish stocks have withered in the Gulf of Maine, lobsters and crabs have surged in abundance. In the eastern Gulf, fishermen have become dangerously dependent on lobster, which now accounts for 90 percent of their seafood landings. Elsewhere in New England, groundfishermen are barely scraping by.

According to the law governing the nation’s fisheries, conservation and management efforts must prevent overfishing while achieving a continuous optimum yield from each fishery. The reauthorized law, which was signed in 2007, requires the majority of stocks be rebuilt by 2014. It will be an uphill battle.

Read the complete story at The Scientist.